


Burn Bright

by TenSpencerRiedPlease



Series: IronPanther Plotbunnies [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Cuties, Enemies to Lovers, Fluff and Angst, Humor, I Don't Even Know, T'Challa is Not Pleased, Tony Stark Does What He Wants, but it works out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-28
Updated: 2016-06-28
Packaged: 2018-07-18 18:12:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7325374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TenSpencerRiedPlease/pseuds/TenSpencerRiedPlease
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>T’Challa is not a violent man by nature but his roommate was testing his resolve. Three months, <em>three</em> months and Tony Stark has managed to ruin every single day of those three months. </p><p>He should have listened to his father and gone to a nice school in Wakanda but no, he had thought that with his father’s pushing to open the country up he should explore the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burn Bright

**Author's Note:**

> This is named after a lyric from Sum of Our Parts my Miranda Lambert.
> 
> Also this has no plot, I don't even know what I was doin here, I just wanted to do a thing ok?? Next up is a couples retreat AU because I must.

T’Challa is not a violent man by nature but his roommate was testing his resolve. Three months, _three_ months and Tony Stark has managed to ruin every single day of those three months. He either stayed up absurdly late while blasting Metallica or something equally horrible, came home absolutely wasted, or decided to show up to class that day only to be an ass. The only saving grace had been lab times, which T’Challa had been looking forward to until he found out his lab was right beside Tony’s and he hadn’t escaped his horrible roommate, he’d simply ruined even more of T’Challa’s college experience.

He should have listened to his father and gone to a nice school in Wakanda but no, he had thought that with his father’s pushing to open the country up he should explore the world. And then Tony fucking Stark had to ruin his entire life. He takes a deep breath and centers himself because that was dramatic; there was no need for dramatics. But he couldn’t help but dread going home because he was bound to find Tony in some sorry state and in his defense he wasn’t wrong. When people had sex they shut the door, even in America, so _why_ Tony insisted on leaving the door open for him to get an eye full he had no idea.

At this point he wasn’t even surprised. Instead of reacting he looks at the guy Tony was currently balls deep in. He was attractive, at least, with long dark hair and blue eyes, “you have _atrocious_ taste in men,” he snarls at the guy and he moves on. He is a prince; it was unbecoming to be rude so that was as far as he would go. If he was in Wakanda he wouldn’t have to deal with this problem but no, he _had_ to go travel the world. He should have gone to Canada, the worst thing they have there is the geese and Justin Bieber. Even at that the chances of him running into half of those things was low but no, he chose America and now he was pretty much rooming with Justin Bieber.

Homework, he decides, will remove the stress of his horrible roommate and it would have the added benefit of him being able to take a night off this week. Sam had invited him out under the guise of too much work being bad for his health but T’Challa was used to a heavy stress load. One did not grow up knowing he was going to be king one day and not develop ways to handle stress, it was not done. But Sam was nice, and he had invited a friend of his and his boyfriend, Rhodey, so T’Challa had told him he would consider it. Unfortunately his roommate ruined _that_ too when he barges in, “hey, want some pizza?” he asks, mostly clothed.

“I would rather be flayed alive and tossed in a vat of salt,” he says viciously. He doesn’t mean for it to come out so mean but Tony hadn’t even _knocked_ and that was unacceptable.

“That is honestly so dramatic, I love it. Seriously though, what do you want on your pizza?” Tony asks, clearly not taking some very clear hints.

“If it is your intention to make nice after earlier you can start by leaving this planet so the rest of humanity does not have to suffer with your presence,” he says stiffly, nose in the air.

“Ohh, I can see your Oxford showing. I’ll get you a Hawaiian, you’ll love it. Oh, and next time you walk in on the fun just join in,” he says. He smirks and with that he leaves, shutting the door behind him. At least he wasn’t a complete barbarian, T’Challa supposed, because he knew enough to shut the door.

Tony turned out to be right about the pizza, even if T’Challa was concerned with the presence of _fruit_ on a pizza. He tells Tony it’s the most disgusting thing he has ever eaten.

*

“What’s the proper protocol for breaking up with someone?” Tony asks, throwing T’Challa’s door open without knocking. This had been happening frequently, Tony deciding that they must be friends because T’Challa told his sex partner that he had horrible taste in men.

“If you do not remove yourself from my room immediately I will remove you from this building via that window,” T’Challa says, pointing to the window that was just _begging_ him to throw Tony out of it.

“So not via text message?” Tony asks, ignoring T’Challa’s threat.

“Absolutely not you swine, at least meet them in person, good god. Now remove yourself from my presence you ignorant beast,” he says, waving his hand around. Tony snickers at this and leaves the room. He also leaves T’Challa confused as to why Tony never seemed to react to his insults. Perhaps Tony was more obtuse than T’Challa initially assumed.

*

Sam had harassed him into going out and after a week of all but beating Tony out of his personal space he needed a nice night to let loose and enjoy himself. But no, Tony Stark had to go ruin that too because he just happened to be Rhodey’s best friend and personal parasite. “I hope you get hit by an ambulance,” T’Challa tells him upon seeing him.

Rhodey sighs deeply, “Tony, what did you do?” he asks, giving Tony a _look_.

“Nothing, I’ve been being nice and frankly he’s not that nice back,” Tony says, sounding scandalized that Rhodey would even consider that he was the problem.

“Oh that is not true. You blast you awful music all night, you come home drunk, you do not clean up after yourself, you keep doing my homework, and you have absolutely no concept of personal space or knocking. In short you are the most horrible person I have ever had the misfortune of ever having to be near for any length of time,” T’Challa snaps. He shouldn’t have lost his temper, he knew, but after just over three months of dealing with Tony’s antics he had had enough.

The last thing he expects is for Tony to look hurt by the comment when thus far everything T’Challa has said has rolled off his back. T’Challa ends up spending the entire night feeling guilty, more so when Tony is uncharacteristically silent, and drinking too much.

What Rhodey and Sam were thinking by sending them off home together he had no idea but after the two almost walk into several poles they make a silent pact to cling to each other for balance. “Am I really the most horrible person you’ve ever had to live with?” Tony asks, voice small. They were still a few blocks from home and T’Challa was very tempted to throw Tony in the bushes to escape his guilt but he was far too drunk to remain upright so he had to use Tony as a human walking stick still.

“No,” he says eventually, “my step brother tried to murder me once, he wins.” It occurs to him that inadvertently comparing Tony to a would-be murderer was probably kind of cruel but only after the words exited his mouth. He was terrible at this sort of thing, getting along with people he did not like. His father had faith that his diplomacy skills would improve but T’Challa himself was not so sure. He was naturally inclined to insult people he disliked, it was a human reaction, but it was one he needed to rid himself of if he had hopes of being a good king some day.

“Oh. Guess I’m not worse than the guy that tried to kill you. What a relief,” Tony says dryly.

*

T’Challa’s guilt refuses to go away, which is absurd because he does not like Tony, he should not feel bad for insulting him. It was hardly his fault Tony might possibly be the most annoying person on this planet and he should not feel bad for saying so. But here he was, with a Hawaiian pizza prepared to make nice with his roommate because he felt terrible for being so rude.

“Pizza?” T’Challa asks, setting the box in front of Tony’s text books. This was the first time he had seen Tony do any sort of course work and T’Challa wondered how he managed to not flunk out. Sure, he had heard that Tony is a genius, but he never seemed to do any schoolwork, which was required for grades and passing classes no matter how smart you were.

“Thought you hated me,” Tony mumbles, not looking up from his work.

T’Challa sighs and sits down on one of the stools that were pulled up to the kitchen island, “I do not hate you, I was simply frustrated by your actions and instead of telling you like I should have I let my anger build until I acted unreasonably rude.” There, that was a sufficient apology, it didn’t imply Tony was blameless but it didn’t let T’Challa off the hook for his behavior either.

Tony shrugs, still not looking up, “S’fine, I kind of suck, I get it. I think I might have found an apartment across the city, I mean it’s hardly off the planet but I figured I should finish the PhD first.”

This… was curious. Tony, to his knowledge, was a rather resilient person and clearly that was more of a show than anything if his reaction to T’Challa was any indication. He takes a deep breath, “you do not need to move out, Tony, but I would greatly appreciate you refraining from coming home drunk. To be honest your drinking habits are worrying, you consume more than enough alcohol to be labeled an alcoholic by now and your friends are shockingly unconcerned,” he says. Anyone who felt the need to drink most nights, if he came home, was certainly bordering on problem behavior and yet none of his friends displayed any sort of worry when they were out.

His sex life was also another worry T’Challa had but he wasn’t going to bring that up right now. At the moment Tony looked shocked, “what?” he asks somewhat dumbly, finally looking up from his work.

“You do not need to move out, and I’m the one who moved in at a later date, it would stand to reason that I should be the one to leave. Not that I’m leaving, Tony, I rather like this place,” he says. His roommate left much to be desired but he would rather deal with one Tony than several other annoying roommates. They might even out to the same level of annoying but he would not mention that either.

“Yeah, that’s nice, but that wasn’t what I meant. That last bit about my drinking, what did you mean by that?” he asks, intent on hearing the answer. That was odd because every time T’Challa had seen Tony speak with someone he was clearly only half involved in the conversation, which T’Challa found rather rude.

“I… well you drink far too much and I do not understand why no one has expressed concern over it,” he says honestly. If this was something he noticed was a pattern in the less than two weeks that he had lived here his friends had noticed, or at least T’Challa hoped they did.

“No one has noticed,” Tony says bluntly, “which is weird because everyone notices everything I do.”

“So you’ve been doing this on purpose?” T’Challa asks, wondering how he had gotten here when all he had intended was to feed Tony pizza and be civil with the man. Tony’s phrasing was certainly suspect but T’Challa could be reading to much into things.

“Yes… well no… kind of… it didn’t start out this way. I just wanted some time off, time to myself, you know? So I maybe drank too much and it was kind of pleasant so I did it again and I mean people _noticed_ but they didn’t really care and when I started drinking more people printed stupid headlines about my being like… quirky or something. I don’t know how it got to this but… but it’s fine, _I’m_ fine, I’ve got it under control,” Tony says.

“I’m sure you think you do, but your other behaviors suggest otherwise,” T’Challa tells him. He tells himself to walk away, this was more than he bargained for, but his guilt keeps him there. Now he was part of the problem thanks to his comment the other night and he should clean up his mess like a proper leader would. Unfortunately for him his mess happened to have tapped into a far larger mess that he hadn’t known existed until he threw himself head first into it.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tony asks, guarded.

“It means your habits of recklessness, casual sex, skipping class, and annoying your roommate indicate you have very little control over your actions. Or, on the contrary, you have perfect control over your actions and you intend to make sure that no one looks past your reckless abandon. If the goal is to push people away my observations tell me you either have very little people to push away or you have been very successful in your endeavors,” T’Challa says perhaps a little too bluntly. He could have put that in softer terms but he was a fan of cutting to the heart of the problem so he could resolve said problem and move on. His father often told him that he was a fantastic problem solver but he needed to learn tact. T’Challa agreed.

Tony looks back down at his text and T’Challa kicks himself for his bluntness. He should have been more respectful, not everyone appreciated that level of candor. Tony takes a breath and looks back up, “how do you even notice this shit?” he asks.

“I have functioning senses and I rather dislike listening to your self destruction,” T’Challa says, forgetting his promise not to be blunt as fast as he remembered it. This is why he needed to spend more time with his father, he was good at these things and he needed to learn from a good leader. He should have stayed in Wakanda.

“That’s nice, I’m stealing this entire pizza by the way,” and just like that Tony flees the scene with the pizza, freeing T’Challa from his obligations, thank god. Maybe he should go back to Wakanda.

*

The only bonus to his accidentally loosing it on Tony and attempting to make it up to him via pizza, and largely failing, was that Tony learned how to knock. He also learned that passing out just inside the door was far quieter that trying to make it to his room.

That’s how he finds Tony on his way to class, curled around an umbrella snoring away. “Remove yourself from the doorway,” T’Challa says, gently nudging Tony with the toe of his shoe.

Tony snorts himself awake, glaring at T’Challa for having woken him up. “You’re in my way,” T’Challa explains. He shouldn’t need to explain why he didn’t want his probably-still-drunk roommate sleeping in front of the door, it should be obvious. “Do you not also have class in twenty minutes?” he asks. Not that he’s seen Tony go, how he was keeping his grades T’Challa had no clue.

“Class can suck my dick,” Tony mumbles, looking remarkably like that angry rat T’Challa found in his dorm when he was still attending Oxford.

“Be that as it may I still need you to move. Go to bed and sleep off your hangover,” he says, nudging Tony with his shoe again. Tony keeps grumbling at him but he crawls off to his room, throwing himself down in the door way and falling asleep again.

*

T’Challa, near the end of the semester, starts spending more time in his lab to get his projects done. That’s when he notices Tony’s near constant presence in his own lab space, and that his sleep deprivation mimicked drunkenness strongly. He tells himself to stay out of it, that finding another bad habit of Tony Stark’s was not his problem, but ten minutes later he’s all but beating Stark out of his lab with a broom. Tony is less than impressed with this but he also hadn’t slept in almost four days so he was in no capacity to be making decisions.

That, of course, leads to Tony trying to retaliate and compensate for T’Challa’s taking notice of his issues. It probably would have been fine if Stark weren’t so good at pressing people’s buttons. “Come on, you’ve got to have _some_ issue. I mean I get that you’re a straight A student, you never miss class, your inventions are okay, and you’re basically perfect all around but there’s always _something_ ,” Tony says. He’s currently planted on the island, feet swinging back and forth as he eyes T’Challa. All T’Challa wanted was to cook in peace but no, Stark insisted on being annoying.

“If you insist,” he mumbles, poking at his frying veggies.

“Seriously, you even eat healthy. You know what, anyone who willingly eats green peppers has issues. So what is it for you huh? Aren’t you a prince? Wakanda, right? Yeah, prince of Wakanda, that’s got to come with some problems,” Tony says, thinking though things. T’Challa literally _sees_ the light go off in his head, “oh, someone as perfect as you as _got_ to be afraid of failure. And being the prince, maybe even king someday, of Wakanda probably makes that all the worse. I mean now if you fuck up an entire _country_ suffers,” Tony says, fully prepared to continue but T’Challa throws a green pepper slice at him.

Tony slaps the offending veggie away with a bright smile on his face, “that’s it! You have a crippling fear of failure and you think you’re going to run your entire country!” Tony says excitedly.

“I worry for the future of your company if you find the destruction of Wakanda amusing,” T’Challa says dryly.

“Nah, Wakanda dying is terrible, but Mr. PerfectPants over here thinking he’s even capable of failure is fucking amusing. That’s never going to happen,” Tony says and he sounds so _sure_.

“I am plenty capable of failure, Tony, no need to sound so sure of my success,” he mumbles. He’s failed plenty and he loathed diplomacy, it was tedious and frustrating and unfortunately for him it was necessary.

“T’Challa, I have seen very little room for failure in anything you do. I’ve seen your work and I mean it’s… limited but it’s good, great even and that’s pretty high praise coming from me. I know you wonder how I manage to stay in school but profs don’t really care if you show up for class when you’ve successfully built a semi-autonomous Ai system,” he says lazily, like that was an everyday occurrence. This was _news_ to T’Challa, who was far more concerned with finding Tony’s boxers in the _oven_ of all places.

“You build a semi-autonomous AI?” he asks. For a moment he forgets his dinner but when Tony looks at it he remembers that he is cooking and that he needs to pay attention to his food.

“Yeah, JARVIS. But that wasn’t what we were talking about, we were talking about your fear of failure,” Tony says, looking pleased with himself for bringing that back up.

“You’re an absolute ass,” T’Challa mumbles.

“But I’m right. Seriously though, I’ve seen your records, mostly because I got really mad at you after you told me that I was basically the scum of the earth and I figured you couldn’t be perfect but jokes on me, you are. Your grades are impeccable; your extracurricular are squeaky clean, and you’re a fucking _prince_ , a real prince. You might as well have stepped out of a god damn Disney movie you’re that perfect,” Tony says.

“Disney princes are white,” T’Challa says though that didn’t make _him_ the flawed one.

“Hey, there’s Naveen,” Tony points out, “but you’re cuter. And there’s another thing, who even _has_ a face that pretty? Stop looking at me, you’re so beautiful it hurts and _god_ , when you’re shirtless,” Tony makes a noise worthy of a porn film and T’Challa pokes at his dinner awkwardly.

“I am not a spoiled brat who gets turned into a frog, thank you. And I am of average looks, there is no need to flatter me,” he says in what he hopes is a dignified tone.

“He changes in the end for Tiana, don’t diss Naveen. And they must come fucking pretty in Wakanda if you’re _average_ looking. You have any hot brothers or sisters? Preferably not the murderous one,” Tony says, waving his hand around.

“If you continue with this conversation I will introduce you to my step brother. And I still dislike Naveen, Tiana deserved better.” He leaves poor Shuri out of this because there was no need for his sister to suffer like he had to.

“I think Naveen is sweet and that you’re wrong. And fine, no hot siblings, got any hot friends? Cousins? Grandfathers?” Tony asks, squinting.

“You are _depraved_ ,” T’Challa says.

*

Somehow one conversation snowballed into another into another and suddenly they are arguing about which Batman was the best Batman. T’Challa was partial to George Cloony’s Batman; he knew it was bad but he thought it gave the film character. The batsuit had _nipples_. Tony, of course, was fond of Bale though T’Challa was under the impression that Ledger stole the show in Dark Knight. That got them arguing about Leto, which got them arguing about method acting, which led to an inexplicable make out session.

“We are not in a bad romance novel, why is this happening?” he asks, confused as to how it had come to this.

“Maybe we’re secretly in a bad porno and we’re just _meant_ to have sex,” Tony suggests, wiggling his eyebrows.

“Get off of me,” T’Challa says, depositing Tony on the ground.

Tony lets his legs fall apart, “you know you want me,” he says, wiggling on the ground.

“I had a moment of weakness and it will never happen again,” T’Challa says, eyeing Tony wearily.

*

His moments of weakness were growing frequent and it didn’t help that Tony was genuinely enjoyable once you broke past his annoying exterior. What T’Challa had mistook for disinterest and rudeness in conversations turned out to be Tony’s brain running faster than everything else around him, and most of his bad habits could be linked back to his genius as well. He drank too much to quiet his mind, his inability to connect to his peers was because he didn’t understand social convention and saw no reason to use euphemisms to cover what he meant, and his overindulgence in sex… well that was mostly a high libido. It was partially because that was the only way Tony had learned he _could_ connect with his peers, but mostly it was an annoyingly high libido.

“Okay are you done _now_?” Tony asks, rolling around on the ground for some inexplicable reason.

“No I am not. Are you rolling around down there for a reason?” he asks, lifting an eyebrow.

“I’m bored. I have nothing to do but roll around on the ground. Also this cement is like… weirdly soft,” Tony says, patting the ground.

“Please go to sleep,” T’Challa says, throwing the blanket he kept in his lab at Tony. Why he kept that in here he had no idea, Tony only slept in there a few times a week and he could ring his own blankets.

*

“Can I have some of that pasta?” Tony asks, stabbing T’Challa’s pasta and taking a bite before waiting for an answer. T’Challa retaliates by stealing a slice of Tony’s Hawaiian pizza. “Hey!” Tony protests, giving him puppy dog eyes. He was too cute when he did that so T’Challa looks away to preserve his own dignity. He would not return the pizza because Tony has pouted, that was absurd.

“You stole my pasta I will steal your pizza,” he says, nose in the air.

“A piece of pizza is worth way more than a couple noodles!” Tony says, stabbing more of T’Challa’s pasta and stuffing it in his mouth. T’Challa steals another piece of pizza and the war starts but unfortunately the food is the loser.

“What the hell, guys?” Sam asks, Rhodey frowning behind him.

“He started it!” he and Tony say in sync, pointing at each other.

“God, this is like Bucky and Nat all over again,” Sam mumbles.

**Author's Note:**

> [My writing Tumblr](https://tenspencerriedplease.tumblr.com/)


End file.
